Archive for April, 2014

I’ve had grind samples from some of my coarse/filter grinders at home and at work analysed a couple of times over the last year, via laser particle sizing, and have just submitted a new batch of samples which focus on some areas currently of interest to me. This is made possible by @mathewsmith1 who is absolutely awesome for taking the time to make this sort of analysis available to me.

I’ve posted in the past more detail about the specific nature of the particle sizing conducted, and some of the related topics, and this is available in previous posts on the blog. I find the process and the information both fascinating (fun!), and illuminating. It helps to inform and reinforce all the other information I gather and write up about my brewing.

This time around, I wanted to hone-in on a couple of grind settings on my filter grinder at home, a Mahlkonig Tanzania (which I’ve modified with a weighted hopper to minimise and counteract the effects of ‘popcorning’ when single dosing). Specifically, I wanted to look at a couple of settings around a medium drip grind that I use for some pourover brew methods, and several settings close together right up at the coarse French Press end of the scale.

And, I wanted to assess and compare the particle size and distribution curves of a sample from the plan cafe’s fairly new drip and FP grinder, our Bunn G3, with my Tanzania.

The Bunn is a well-known drip grinder that is widely used within modern speciality coffee circles, especially in the US, and it’s fairly highly regarded. Admittedly, the stock, pressed, burrs are not nearly as handsome as those on many other top-end modern coarse grinders, such as the Tanzania, etc, but, there are certain features with the Bunn that help to mitigate and overcome this. I suspect the Bunn might still display a less ‘optimum’ curve than the Tanzania in some ways (it should do anyway, although I could be wrong). But, the Bunn does make some very tasty coffee all the same (which raises other questions about what is actually optimum, and how this affects brewing …another topic).

Then, a local coffee enthusiast Mukhtar approached me with news of his newly acquired Hausgrind Made by Knock hand grinder, and expressed interest in having the grind laser analysed.

I had already heard about the Hausgrind. They are one of a few new hand grinders coming out recently (like the OE Lido and Lido 2 for instance) that have been specifically crafted to produce exceptionally uniform grounds in the medium to coarse range used for filter and FP methods – and which are potentially comparable to the top commercial electric grinders, like those mentioned above (along with the likes of the Uber, EK43, Dittings and other Mahlkonigs) (and with Varios with special steel filter burrs, and certain other Mahlkonig models, offering an option at the top-end of the domestic electric grinder range). The samples I’ve seen, and tasted, from his Hausgrind seem really very good indeed.

So, now, this has happily developed into a nice little comparison of some of the top coarse grinders out there, both commercial, and domestic hand-driven!

In the end, we almost coincidentally selected the exact same bean for our samples, and, we’ve followed pretty much the same protocol, to standardise our samples, which has worked out brilliantly, as this will now make for an even more direct comparison between the grinders.

Some of my (edited) notes regarding my samples from the Tanzania and the Bunn:

As per my standard practice, with Tanzania, beans loaded onto static burrs, weighted mod applied, then burrs switched on.For Bunn, beans are dumped into already running burrs, again as per my standard practice for this grinder.

Matt mentioned he might even run analysis on a sample from his own Hario Skerton hand grinder as well (which is not really meant to be in the same league as the other grinders, but which is still a very nice little hand burr grinder), which would be great to compare alongside the others as well.